Dirk Wascher

• Master's of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle, WA., USA
• Senior Researcher at Wageningen University & Research

Recent literature demonstrates the contribution of short food supply chains (SFSC) to regional economies and sustainable food systems, and acknowledges their role as drivers for sustainable development. Moreover, different types of SFSC have been supported by urban food policies (UFP) over the few last years and actors from the food chain became pa...

The debate on urban resilience and metabolism has directed increasing attention to the ecological footprint of food consumption, self-sufficiency as a means of food security, and regionalisation of food systems for shortening supply chains. Recently, metropolitan regions have proposed food policies that aim to foster local food systems connected to...

Making use of Life Cycle Thinking, the Metropolitan Foodscape Planner (MFP) tool provides ecological footprint maps and supply/demand data showing a large potential for metropolitan food supplies. In the discussion, we examine these results in the light of recent research on the impacts of the prevailing global trade agro-food systems for the impac...

In the wider debate on urban resilience and metabolism, food-related aspects have gained increasing importance. At the same time, urban agro-food systems in city regions are facing major challenges with regard to often limited domestic supplies, resource-intensive producer–consumer relationships, and the competition for low-price products via globa...

This study explores Knowledge Brokerage (KB) aspects of an ex-post Impact Assessment (IA) for the Rural Development Programme (RDP) measure of setting up young farmers, under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), at the regional level in Northern Greece. The measure supports the entry of young farmers in agriculture by moving land from older to you...

The Food Planning and Innovation for Sustainable Metropolitan Regions (FOODMETRES) project strives to assess the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of food chains, with regard to the spatial, logistical, and resource dimensions of growing food as well as the questions of food safety and quality as key assets for food planning and governance. R...

There is increasing recognition that agricultural landscapes meet multiple societal needs and demandsbeyond provision of economic and environmental goods and services. Accordingly, there have been sig-nificant calls for the inclusion of societal, amenity and cultural values in agri-environmental landscapeindicators to assist policy makers in monito...

FOODMETRES has combined quantitative and qualitative methods and engaged with a variety of actors in metropolitan regions including food producers, civic food organisations, and government bodies. FOODMETRES defines metropolitan regions in the context of the land use impacts of cities on their surrounding areas. It hence considers phenomena such as...

Offering a series of decision support tools for stakeholders of urban-metropolitan agriculture, the European research project ‘Food Planning and Innovation for Sustainable Metropolitan Regions’ (short FOODMETRES) aims at describing, analysing and facilitating the development of innovative short chain food systems geared towards urban demand for saf...

FOODMETRES aims to describe, analyse and facilitate the development of short food supply chain (SFSC) innovations in metropolitan regions, including their rural, urban and periurban areas. The research carried out in this project covers questions of food production, processing and logistics; its focus is sustainable and resource-efficient soluti...

Food chains considered to be sustainable are chains that produce food closer to the city, reduce the number of steps in the chain and use natural resources more efficiently. In the FOODMETRES project (see previous article), case studies were undertaken for six metropolitan regions – London, Rotterdam, Berlin, Milan, Ljubljana, and Nairobi – to show...

Feeding the city is an issue of increasing importance because of the inadequate production capabilities of urban and peri-urban agri-food systems. In fact, urban areas are becoming more densely populated, and their impact in environmental, economic and social terms is becoming increasingly important, particularly in metropolitan contexts. For this...

The loss of natural areas across Europe over the last century has led to a major decline in biodiversity. One of the main reasons is increasing habitat fragmentation. This article describes the experience gathered in developing ecological networks at the European level and the future challenges. The design of ecological networks is primarily determ...

Measuring societal awareness of the rural agrarian landscape Indicators and scale issues The work presented in this report is part of the effort to define the landscape state and diversity indicator in the frame of COM (2006) 508 “Development of agri-environmental indicators for monitoring the integration of environmental concerns into the common...

Contemporary policy making calls for scientific support to anticipate the possible consequences of optional policy decisions on sustainable development. This paper presents an analytical framework for ex ante assessment of economic, social, and environmental impacts of policy driven land use changes that can be used as an aid to policy making. The...

We have developed a new hierarchical European Landscape Classification that can be used as a framework for, e.g., indicator reporting and environmental sampling. Landscapes are ecological meaningful units where many processes and components interact. And as such, landscapes themselves have resulted from long-term interactions of natural abiotic, bi...

By offering a series of decision support tools for stakeholders of metropolitan regions, SUSMETRO facilitates and enables evidence-based decision making by means of ‘serious gaming’. Making use of the Phase 1 thematic maps such as on agricultural competitiveness, nature conservation and recreational values, stakeholders can compare impacts of tradi...

specific species, the biodiversity values of agricultural land can differ substantially across Europe. From the policy perspective, high nature value agricultural landscapes are of large interest in the framework of agri-environmental measures and rural development objectives. This project aims at developing a new indicator for high nature value fa...

This comparative study of landscape planning, within three case-studies in England, Germany and the Netherlands, has the proposed outcomes to create a mutually understood model for ‘landscape planning’, a catalogue of key concepts on space, landscape and planning and a proposal for further European exchange of experiences on landscape plans. The co...

We examine the advantages and disadvantages of a methodological framework designed to analyze the poorly understood relationships between the ecosystem properties of large portions of land, and their capacities (stocks) to provide goods and services (flows). These capacities (stocks) are referred to as landscape functions. The core of our assessmen...

This paper reviews conflicts between biodiversity conservation and agricultural activities in agricultural landscapes and evaluates strategies to reconcile such conflicts. Firstly, a historical perspective on the development of conflicts related to biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is presented. Secondly, recent trends in agricultural policie...

The dramatic changes in land use observed in Europe in the last fifty years have generally resulted in improvement of human welfare and economic development. On the other hand, they have caused serious environmental problems. There is therefore a need for approaches that help to understand in an integrative way the economic, environmental and socie...

Dit artikel (Alterra) geeft een overzicht van ervaringen in een aantal omringende landen met de ontwikkeling en uitvoering van landschapsbeleid op nationaal en regionaal niveau. Het betreft: Duitsland (Noordrijn-Westfalen), Engeland, Frankrijk, België (Vlaanderen) en Nederland

This Blueprint for EUROSCAPE 2020 proposes to undertake a radically new strategic operational approach for the European Union when defining targets for its territorial policies. The key principles are: (1) to establish a policy monitoring for rural development on the basis of a landscape functions; (2) introduce new spatial planning instruments to...

Land use includes those human activities that exhibit a spatial dimension and that change the bio-geophysical conditions of land. Land use policy making at European level aims at fostering sustainability pathways of natural resource use and rural development through the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation while supporting s...

While some rural areas draw increasing populations to their landscape amenities and some are changed by the long reach of metropolitan sprawl, agriculture defines, and dominates rural landscapes. Amenity characteristics and ecological services of many rural landscapes occur in the context of agricultural economies. As these economies respond to int...

The principle of multifunctionality considers simultaneously a variety of social, economic and environmental goods and services related to land use. It is thus a key to sustainable development of land and rural areas. Land use policies seek to support the economic competitiveness and sustainable development of rural areas. For an efficient Impact A...

Recent European instruments such as the European Landscape Convention (ELC) and institutionalized environmental reporting activities such as by OECD or the European Environment Agency have formulated clear demands for assessing the state and trends of European landscapes. One critical reference for understanding landscape changes is the recognition...

- Human culture is strongly influenced by ecosystems, and ecosystem change can have a significant impact on cultural identity and social stability. - To achieve conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems, ‘‘tradi- tional’’ and ‘‘formal’’ knowledge systems need to be linked. - Loss of traditional knowledge systems has many direct and indirect ef...

Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) is designed to describe landscape character. It can be applied at a range of scales, from the national, though to the regional and local. It may also integrate landscape character analysis with biodiversity assessments, the analysis of historical character, air, water and soil quality, and socio-economic functio...

Climate change and habitat fragmentation are considered key pressures on biodiversity. In this paper we explore the potential synergetic effects between these factors. We argue that processes at two levels of spatial scale interact: the metapopulation level and the species range level. Current concepts of spatially dynamic metapopulations and speci...

On the basiis of 14 case studies across Europe, this report seeks to highlight the strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and treats (SWOT) related to the specific landscape characteristiscs and land use trends in transfrontier landscapes.

The large diversity of landscapes characteristic for specific regions is one of the key cultural-heritage elements of Europe, although there is a tendency for regional differences to disappear. In view of the increasing interest in landscape-related concepts expressed by policy institutes such as the European Commission, the European Environment Ag...

With the development of both a conceptual framework and the identification of practical indicator for assessing agricultural impacts on landscapes, the OECD has initiated an operational approach for measuring changes in the structure, management and values of landscapes with clear orientation towards political and economic targets. From this perspe...

At the European level, both environmental policy and research require increasingly reliable and methodologically unbiased spatial reference systems in support of environmental reports and monitoring using indicators, impact analysis or scenarios. Due to recent advances in the availability and accuracy of internationally harmonised geographic data,...

Het rapport beschijft de bevindingen van een studie naar aspecten van succes en falen van het landschapsbeleid. Het tweede hoofdstuk beschrijft een beknopte literatuurstudie naar het succes en falen van het landschapsbeleid. Daarna komen landschapsbeleidsplannen aan bod om te zien hoe effectief deze zijn in hun uitwerking. Hoofdstuk vier verzamelt...

Mobile species may rely on one or more habitats during the course of their life cycle and these may be spatially separated by a few metres or several thousand kilometres. Previous chapters have described the important spatial and temporal relationships between and within coastal habitats. These include sometimes complex ecological and geomorphologi...

The book contains edited and revised versions of 16 selected papers presented at the workshop 'Towards operationalization of the effects of CAP on environment, landscape and nature: exploration of indicator needs' held in Wageningen in April 1997. It reviews, from a European perspective, the theoretical development and use of indicators in the asse...